Yes campaigners challenge Danny Alexander to a sing-song

Yes campaigners in Badenoch and Strathspey have set their own musical challenge to local MP Danny Alexander and Better Together supporters.

They want them to prove who is more in tune with voters by releasing their own Indy single, following the success of the local Yes campaign’s newly launched anthem.

Carrbridge musician Gilly launched "Let Alba Shine" on-line earlier this week and it is already approaching 2,000 hits, thanks also to a video sequence put together by fellow Carrbridge campaigner John Anderson.

John’s wife, renowned crime writer and fervid independence campaigner Lin Anderson, heard the song and was bowled over by it.

"Gilly just sang it to me one day, no guitar or anything, and I just felt it was perfect, so inspiring. We wanted to make sure the world heard it and saw images just as stirring," he told the ‘Strathy’.

Gilly - real name Michael John McElligott - had already worked with folkies The Cask on the song, which had its premiere at a packed Yes meeting in Aviemore Community Centre in the Spring.

But with the big day approaching - now merely eight weeks away - he told the "Strathy": "I decided it needed a rougher, more driving edge, and the campaign put me in touch with a music producer in Stirling.

"I multi-tracked and beefed up the vocal, a bit more Braveheart, and it was all pieced together by email more less as we chose to get it online as a download, bang up to date with the technology.

"We’ve been bowled over by the immediate response and hope it’s all going to go viral. I’ve had fantastic reviews of the song."

Author Lin is so passionate a Braveheart herself that she catalogued the success of the blockbuster with her own account ‘Braveheart - from Hollywood to Holyrood’ in 2004.

She said of the song: "It’s the perfect, rousing anthem."

The former Grantown IT and maths teacher has been a huge hit herself as one of Scotland’s renowned "Femme Fatales" crime writing trio, together with Alanna Knight and Alex Gray.

Her creation of forensic scientist Rhona Macleod is heading for TV screens, with a series now in production.

She told the "Strathy" that she knew enough about crime to know that it would be criminal of the Scots not to take their opportunity of freedom in September: "That’s why I wanted to back Gilly with his stirring anthem."

* To hear and see the track, visit YouTube and key in "Let Alba Shine".